GOP men tutored in running against women

The National Republican Congressional Committee wants to make sure there are no Todd Akin-style gaffes next year, so it’s meeting with top aides of sitting Republicans to teach them what to say — or not to say — on the trail, especially when their boss is running against a woman.

Speaker John Boehner is serious, too. His own top aides met recently with Republican staff to discuss how lawmakers should talk to female constituents.

While GOP party leaders have talked repeatedly of trying to “rebrand” the party after the 2012 election losses, the latest effort shows they’re not entirely confident the job is done.

So they’re getting out in front of the next campaign season, heading off gaffes before they’re ever uttered and risk repeating the 2012 season, when a handful of comments let Democrats paint the entire Republican Party as anti-woman.

Boehner urged his colleagues Thursday in response to this POLITICO story to “be a little more sensitive” when running against women.

“Some of our members just aren’t as sensitive as they ought to be,” Boehner said.

Boehner (R-Ohio) said bluntly that “when you look around the Congress, there are a lot more females in the Democrat caucus than there are in the Republican caucus.”

Republicans are trying to avoid a 2012 repeat. Akin dropped the phrase “legitimate rape” during the 2012 Missouri Senate race, costing himself a good shot at winning his own race and touching off Democratic charges of a GOP “War on Women” that dogged Republicans in campaigns across the country.

In the 2014 cycle, there will be at least 10 races where House GOP male incumbents face Democratic women challengers. More races could crop up as the cycle unfolds.

Some of the highest profile fights will take place in states like New York, Illinois, Florida and Virginia — the last where GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli was defeated recently due in part to being perceived as anti-woman.

Individual Republicans have continued to give Democrats plenty of ammunition about being insensitive to women’s issues. From Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) talking about rape and pregnancy at a Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this year, to House Republicans passing a 20-week abortion ban in June, to Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) blaming military sexual assault on “hormones,” there have been repeated instances where GOP lawmakers have come off as tone-deaf to female voters.

Yet Republican incumbents appear eager to avoid the mistakes of some of their predecessors.

Rep. Scott Rigell, who is running against a Democratic woman next year, said he wants to focus on economic issues, not social issues.

“I look at it this way — I wake up every day not thinking about the social issues,” Rigell said. “I sought office because I know we can do better on job creation and I’m also concerned about our fiscal trajectory.”

Rigell, who said he gets his best counsel from his wife, also said he wants to focus on issues that benefit the “full fabric of our communities.”

“I think as part of that we’re strengthening things that are important to women and, of course, to men as well. Early childhood education, making sure that our children are safe and they have great opportunities once they get out of high school or college,” he said.

Yet the longtime “gender gap” between the parties continues to be pretty stark for the GOP. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney lost women to Barack Obama by 11 percentage points in the 2012 election, and the 2013 campaigns saw a similar trend. A series of recent polls show a continued double-digit lead for Democratic candidates among women, with the margin soaring to much higher levels among single female voters. The GOP — which lost female voters by large margins in every competitive Senate race in the 2012 election — also saw a 10-point increase in its unfavorability rating to among women to 63 percent, according to an October ABC/Washington Post poll.

Of course, female Democratic challengers will have to surmount all the hurdles that anyone seeking to knock of an incumbent always faces: lack of name recognition; difficulty getting media coverage; and most of all — the single biggest issue — a huge fundraising gap.

Yet Democrats have hopes that these candidates will help lead them to the majority in November 2014.

“Our essential strategy is to recruit problem-solvers. And with this Republican Congress having been so destructive to the concerns women have, we are putting a special emphasis on recruiting women who will end those problems,” said Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Israel added: “I can’t promise you they will go dollar-for-dollar with the Republican incumbent. But I can promise that their message, their mechanics, their mobilization will exceed whatever Republican incumbents are able to do.”